PBS Information Weekend on Sunday featured one in all its occasional “Temporary however Spectacular” segments, which usually smuggle in left-wing views underneath cowl of a barely wacky (for public broadcasting) presentation. This week’s little bit of woke propaganda comes within the guise of a poet of the “queer life,” Adam Falkner.

Host John Yang launched Adam Falkner as “a poet, musician, and educator. He describes the main focus of his work as race, gender, queer life, and social justice. Tonight, Falkner shares his ‘Temporary However Spectacular’ tackle performing privilege and forgiveness.”

Oh, pleasure.

Falkner can not fairly forgive himself for being born a white man, which is seemingly an inherently deeply privileged place, even in an egalitarian nation like the US. He’s towards cultural appropriation and…poet Walt Whitman, for being white.

Falkner: The identify of this poem known as “Let’s Get One Factor Midway Straight.” [Editor’s note: Strangled cat sounds ensue] “Stated I wish to get/one factor midway straight/I wish to get/one factor midway straight /I’ve spent my complete life making an attempt on costumes/as a result of no one advised me I could not/and the stakes have been by no means that top/which I’ve come to assume is usually what makes a white author a white author/the final time anybody referred to me by that identify was precisely by no means/however that can also be the purpose/I’m a queer poet/I’m a toddler of an addict/I’m a masquerading white boy/my greatest pal died, and it was unhappy/and these are the tales I water into bloom.

“I’m camp counselor, take a look at cheat, choir boy, cipher rapper, scratch golfer, honor roll, pothead, level guard/and Whitman?/effectively, Whitman says very effectively, ‘You include multitudes.’/However Whitman was a white author, too/and the not-so-funny factor about spending a life proving you are not one thing/is that any story you inform that is not the story is simply survival/or a brick for laying till the wall is excessive sufficient that you’re protected inside/and sooner or later you get up and also you say, my God, whose home is that this?/who did I damage to get right here?/and is it too late/to name for assist?”

Falkner resumes speaking, in his regular talking voice, however with the identical self-flagellating spirit:

….Two themes that I believe quite a bit about in my work are forgiveness and accountability. And on this poem, I am making an attempt to raise up a number of the examples, I believe, from my very own lifetime of what privilege is and the way it reveals up within the lives of lots of white folks, usually subconsciously…However the query for me is extra — of the tales that I’m most silent about, which of them are harming different folks?

This liberal hairshirt interlude was funded partly by the monetary companies agency Raymond James.

A full transcript is under, click on “Develop” to learn:

PBS Information Weekend

2/12/23

7:22:30 p.m. Japanese

Host John Yang: Adam Falkner is a poet, musician, and educator. He describes the main focus of his work as race, gender, queer life, and social justice. Tonight, Falkner shares his “Temporary However Spectacular” tackle performing privilege and forgiveness.

Adam Falkner, Poet and Musician: The identify of this poem known as “Let’s Get One Factor Midway Straight.”

Adam Falkner: “Stated I wish to get/one factor midway straight/I wish to get/one factor midway straight /I’ve spent my complete life making an attempt on costumes/as a result of no one advised me I could not/and the stakes have been by no means that top/which I’ve come to assume is usually what makes a white author a white author/the final time anybody referred to me by that identify was precisely by no means/however that can also be the purpose/I’m a queer poet/I’m a toddler of an addict/I’m a masquerading white boy/my greatest pal died, and it was unhappy/and these are the tales I water into bloom.

I’m camp counselor, take a look at cheat, choir boy, cipher rapper, scratch golfer, honor roll, pothead, level guard/and Whitman?/effectively, Whitman says very effectively, “You include multitudes.”/However Whitman was a white author, too/and the not-so-funny factor about spending a life proving you are not one thing/is that any story you inform that is not the story is simply survival/or a brick for laying till the wall is excessive sufficient that you’re protected inside/and sooner or later you get up and also you say, my God, whose home is that this?/who did I damage to get right here?/and is it too late/to name for assist?”

Falkner in regular talking voice: I’m a poet, an artist, and an educator. I grew up within the Midwest, and I’m based mostly in Brooklyn, New York. Two themes that I believe quite a bit about in my work are forgiveness and accountability. And on this poem, I am making an attempt to raise up a number of the examples, I believe, from my very own lifetime of what privilege is and the way it reveals up within the lives of lots of white folks, usually subconsciously.

And in that, how once we are confronted with the discomfort or the frustration of the fact that’s unearned entry or benefit in our lives, we regularly over-attach to different marginalized identities or tales or wounds that we maintain. However the query for me is extra of the tales that I’m most silent about, which of them are harming different folks?

So I am usually wrestling with these questions in my work and what it means for us to point out up with forgiveness of our previous selves and of one another, but in addition how can we maintain ourselves accountable to nonetheless rising and studying and evolving and listening even when it is painful? My identify is Adam Falkner, and that is my “Temporary However Spectacular” tackle performing privilege and forgiveness.